1. So—you’ve gone and
started a whole new time period. You write about Ancient Greece—isn’t that
enough? Why?And why the later Middle
Ages?

Well, I’ve always loved the Middle Ages.I love chivalry, warts and all, and I wanted
to write about it.And—if you follow
William Gold long enough (like, into Book 2, The Long Sword) we’ll get to
Greece in this period, too.But mostly,
it’s about my love of the martial arts of the period.I love to fight in armour, and I love to
study the period—in situ, as it were.I
don’t just reenact this period.Fighting
in armour with steel swords is a remarkable thing.Hard to describe. But very good for fitness,
and very—exciting.

2. The Ill-Made Knight
reflects some very uncomfortable truths about the Middle Ages, doesn’t it?

It does.I have a
degree in this period; I’ve always loved it, but it’s not a unicorns and
maidens kind of love.The central fact
of my beloved late Middle Ages—in literature, in war, in economics and even in
fashion—is the Black Plague.A third of
the population died.Next to that single
event, it is hard to picture how they kept civilization together, much less
went on with their lives or made great art or fought wars or even went to
church.It must have been—horrible. A
word too often used.

3. And then there’s the
Hundred Year’s War…

Exactly.Wherein
England attempted to take France by means of a war of terror—a very modern kind
of war.Fought by knights who were
sometimes the very antithesis of chivalric.But I’m not writing anti-heroic ‘grim reality.’I’m really interested in genuine heroism—and
what is more heroic than learning a set of ethics and sticking by them in the
face of disaster and death—or even in the face of the banality of evil?I’ll be frank and say that ‘grim reality’
bores me.I have tried to make my
vision of the Hundred Years war as authentic as I could manage; yet my story is
about one of the men who rose above the ‘grim.’It did happen.

4. You are a passionate
advocate of chivalry.

I am!I tried to
practice it as a military professional and I still struggle live up to it.Every time I’m beaten in a match—especially
when I am full of adrenaline—it takes discipline to smile and congratulate my
victor. Ideals of loyalty and generosity can be the devil to adhere to in real
life situations, and it is not for nothing that one of the great Medieval works
of chivalry is a book of questions with no answers!

5. But you admit that
most knights failed to live by the code in period.

Like any ethical code, adhering to chivalry is a
struggle.I’ve seen refugee
columns.I’ve seen directly what happens
when nation-states make war directly on civilian populations; when genocide
occurs or is attempted.I think what I
saw in Central Africa in the 90s informs my idea of what France—France as a
failed state in 1362—must have been like.Psychology and neuroscience have both begun to give us insight into the
long term consequences of trauma; imagine a war that lasted, with some very
brief respites—for over a hundred years.Any rules—and rules at all, any ethics that save a few people from the
slaughter or allow a spark of compassion to exist—are better than no rules at
all.The knights and men-at-arms who
attempted to abide by the rules must have been better men.

And let me say—I
probably say this too often—that we could look at the 20th century
and—eying the statistics—say ‘Democracy is the leading cause of war in the 20th
century’ or ‘Democracies are evil—they killing innocent people.’Every system fails.We can look at the failures, or we can
examine the successes.That said—I still
believe, as Richard Kaeuper, my mentor in University, taught me, that despite
its best efforts, Medieval Chivalry causedmore harm than it limited.Interesting dichotomy, eh?

6. Why did you choose
William Gold?What was the spark?

A few years ago I read a brilliant book by a scholar named
William Cafferro about John Hawkwood, the real life Captain of the White
Company.In the course of the book he
describes the taking of Cesena—a serious war crime in the Italian wars when a
cardinal of the church (soon to be pope) ordered the entire civilian population
of a town exterminated for no better reason than that they had humiliated
him.Cafferro suggests that some of Hawkwood’s
men left him in the aftermath, and the dates suggest that one William Gold, a
fairly senior officer, went off and fought for Venice.I don’t know if William Gold left Hawkwood
because of the massacre of Cesena, but my William Gold will.At the same time—this is what I studied in
university, and I was fascinated by ‘William the Cook’ and the notion that a
man in the later Middle Ages so desperately wanted
to be a knight.

7. You chose the title
The Ill-Made Knight?It’s a pretty famous
title!

It’s true.It is one
of my favorites from my childhood.Of
course, the Ill-Made Knight of T.H. White is Lancelot.I wanted readers to see the connection, and
the homage is quite deliberate.Without
T.H. White I wouldn’t have studied the Middle Ages at all.In fact, we just read ‘The Sword and the
Stone’ to my daughter, and I was struck every night by how much of that book
I’d just—taken in.By osmosis, almost.It was perhaps the most important book of my
childhood, I now realize.

8. You like to write
first person.Do you identify with your
characters?

I confess that I identify with William Gold more than with
Ptolemy in ‘God of War’ or Arimnestos in the ‘Long War’ series.William Gold has in him a number of men I
respect—and a little of me.Arimnestos
is modeled on some SF guys I worked with, but also on my uncle, Donald Cameron,
who was a great story teller and a very dangerous man.But first person—it’s very hard.It is hard to avoid anachronism and it is
fiendish to make sure that the reader understand what’s going on.In France in 1362, it was all I could do to
avoid moment where some character ‘data-dumped’ a political monologue.The Paris Commune?The Jaquerie? Really hard. I hope I pulled it
off.But that said—the challenge is what
drives good writing, I think.

9. There’s an awful lot
of religion in ‘Ill-Made Knight’

Well—there’s some.It
was the central reality of the thinking man in the Middle Ages—at least in the
West.Most of my characters in every
period are pious.Atheism is really a
modern adventure.People in the past believed—or
that’s my reading of history.So—Kineas
has dreams and religious experience, and so does William Gold.I read a lot of Medieval theology before I
wrote this book.And some Medieval
Philosophy, although, to my amateur eye, they are virtually synonymous.Throw in Aristotle—see that’s research saved!
(Laughs) I mean, I read Aristotle for Kineas and Alexander!

10. What are you reading
now, what are you writing, and what’s up with Tom Swan?

Er—ah—I just finished ‘Basic Writings’ which was a
compendium of the writings of Martin Heidegger.And ‘Venetian Ships and Shipbuilders’ by Frederic Chapin Lane, which is
research for both Tom Swan and William Gold.My Venetian Galleys were too much like ancient galleys… I won’t make
that mistake again….I’m about to write
Book Two of the ‘Chivalry’ series, about William Gold and the Green Count’s
Crusade.William—Sir William-is about to
go on one of the least known crusades.And encounter what a wonderful civilization the Byzantine Greeks had—oh,
and another wonderful civilization, the Ottoman Turks…

Tom Swan will ride again—or walk.He’s off to the Siege of Belgrade in 1456.That event will cover three installments, and
I suspect they’ll start to appear by Christmas.I write Tom Swan for fun—and to pay for armour and stuff—so I have to
work on him in the nooks and crannies between projects.Oh, and yesterday I finished Symposium III,
the last chapter in the prequel to the ‘Foreworld’ project.It’s out as a graphic novel.I really recommend it to my Tyrant and Long
War fans, not because I’m so great, but because Dmitry Bondarenko has done an
incredible job of making Ancient Athens come to life.

11. Can we see you fight
in armour?

Yes.I’m a pretty
middling armoured combatant—I’m old, for one thing.But my harness is good—thanks to Mark Vickers
at Saint George’s Armoury,
Craig Sitch at Manning Imperial,
(who also makes some of my Ancient Greek harness) and Peter Fuller at Medieval Reproductions.But I’ll post a melee from a recent event on
my Author page on Facebook.

I want to thank Christian Cameron for this wonderful interview and for the insights into medieval life he has so kindly shared with us. I have just finished "The Ill Made Knight" last night and while I plan a full review in the next couple weeks - tentatively next Friday, September 20th, but could move to the following week - I would like to add that the novel is superb and possibly the best single work of the author as it has the most balance between action, background and world building, while the narrative flow is impeccable here without hitting any walls that stop from turning the pages, but also inviting to further research into the period.

Structurally the novel starts in 1381, with William Gold now a respected and rich 41 year old knight going back to England from Italy; stopping at a Calais inn, he meets an old acquaintance and occasional rival, namely the diplomat, courtier and intrigue master, Geoffrey Chaucer(yes that one!) and a friend of his, Jean Froissart (that one too), with the French/Belgian (as we would say today, "Hainauter" as he was then) chronicler mightily interested in Gold's life and exploits. And of course, so it starts, covering briefly William's upbringing and the how and why he got to France as a 15-16 year old boy and then following his career for the next 6 years or so with much more to come as promised by the author.

If after finishing the novel you read the interview above, you will be struck by how much of what Mr. Cameron told us here, is really reflected in the novel and the way William's voice presents things, showing once more the authorial capabilities of Christian Cameron in bringing an era to life and consciously reflecting on it from the outside too.